Heart Doctor, continued

by Michelle Chihara

A few more nibbles... Breakup Girl on ultimatums: In the game of ultimate Frisbee, people who stay to the middle of the field and lead the charge instead of breaking long for the throw are handlers. As they do so, handlers might yell, "Cut or clear!" -- which basically means, "Get open for a pass or get out of the way!" In ultimate, this admonition is sometimes considered obvious and annoying. In life, however -- that is, in ultimatums -- we are often entitled to yell, "Get open to commitment or clear your things out of my drawer!" Breakup Girl on "taking space": Space: If you're going to go there, go there. No limbo. No fair saying, "Hmm. Need space. Okay, we'll still sleep together, we just won't spoon." Important Breakup Girl maxim: "Over it" means that while there may be this little remnant of that relationship still stuck to your back in that funny place you just can't reach, well, that remnant is stuck to your back, not standing in your way. You can move on while it's still sitting there. From Breakup Girl to the Rescue! A Superhero's Guide to Love, and Lack Thereof (Back Bay Books).

BG on "Why don't I have a boy/girlfriend?"

Having a boy/girlfriend is like having a car with air-conditioning. It may be more comfortable at times, but there's a whole lot more stuff that can go wrong. That is just one of several things I would like to point out to the many fine folks who write me to ask:

Dear Breakup Girl,
Why don't I have a boy/girlfriend?

And here's the problem: the folks who ask me that are fine folks. I mean, if they were saying:

Dear Breakup Girl,
I invented the car alarm, my gums bleed when I'm nervous, and I am president of the International Jar-Jar Binks Fan Club . . . why am I alone?

Well, then we'd have a place to start. Otherwise, it's hard for me to tell you precisely why.

Breakup Girl's willingness to deal over and over with questions like "Why can't I find a date?" is the perfect example of one of her most superheroic traits: her patience. I, as I admit for sake of disclosure, am a devoted Breakup Girl fan, as are many of my friends. We are particularly impressed with BG's ability -- her desire, even -- to take on the world of high school. We all know that romance reduces even the most mature adults to note-passing and melodrama. But Breakup Girl goes so far as to tackle scores upon scores of letters along the lines of "I am 17 and have NEVER had a girlfriend, will I end my life alone?" She faces them all with the same warmth, humor, and no-bullshit compassion that she uses when answering the adults' letters (although the teens soon will have their own section of her site).

"Frankly," Harris says, "it's not necessarily more wearing to go through teens' than grown-ups' letters." Evidently the differences are few. "Teens'll be like, `I went out with this guy for a week and three days.' Grown-ups will say seven or eight years. And teens are more likely to have an emissary find out if someone likes them."

Regardless of the age of her petitioners, Breakup Girl says that avoiding empathy overload is the really tough challenge. Heartbreak creates a lot of sadness, and it spans the spectrum of human pain. Breakup Girl's Web site includes a digital bulletin board straight out of a social-work office, with links for people coping with clinical depression, domestic violence, and other serious problems. She has a resident psychiatrist, Belleruth Naparstek, to help her deal with the "stickier issues." Sometimes, she says, "we have to know when to put the letters down and walk away."

BG on relapses versus reunions:

Dear Breakup Girl,
I recently parted ways with my boyfriend over a spaghetti dinner. Shortly after splitting, we met again and promptly hopped into bed. I believed that this encounter meant something, but when I called him to talk he was completely nonchalant. Was it wrong for me to expect more?

-- Tory

Dear Tory,
Ah, Classic Relapse. See, breakups can be right up there with oysters, figs and Red Shoe Diaries in terms of their aphrodisiac qualities.
The clarion call of the Relapse:
"Wow, you look great without . . . commitment."
So, a Relapse and a Reunion are two different animals. People: Safeguard your feelings -- and don't toy with those of others. Break up, or don't; act accordingly. And if you are going to break up, you might as well be eating spaghetti at the time.

Love,
Breakup Girl

Breakup Girl, in the end, simply does what a good friend would do: She calls you on your bullshit, asks the right questions, and makes you laugh through the tears. And she cares. She really, really cares.

Harris sees herself as saving the world, one couple (or ménage à trois, or whatever floats your boat) at a time. "We don't mean to sound self-important or noble, but what we actually think is that relationships are not like the fluff piece at the end of the news," she says. "When it comes to social change, our social lives are the perfect place to start."

And just in case you still feel the urge to ghettoize Breakup Girl into the same category as Cosmo's "Ten Ways To Tell If He Thinks You're Hot," Harris says, "This is, like, what runs us, for both men and women." Forget The Rules and Mars and Venus: "We definitely do not do the `Men are pigs, women are nuts' school of relationship theory." Instead, "consider a break-up the first day of the rest of your love life," Harris says. "Handle it with humor and dignity, and you'll be in good shape for the next one."

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Michelle Chihara can be reached at mchihara[a]phx.com. Breakup Girl can be reached at www.breakupgirl.com.